Randall Beach: Why the values of ‘Mockingbird’ and Finch still matter

By Randall Beach

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9:34 am EDT, Sunday, July 15, 2018

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Randall Beach: Why the values of ‘Mockingbird’ and Finch still matter

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Fifty-eight years after the book was published and 56 years after the movie was released, “To Kill A Mockingbird” still exerts a profound hold on Americans yearning for a simpler time and heroes such as that small town lawyer, Atticus Finch.

Tom Santopietro, who freely admits to loving Harper Lee’s book and Robert Mulligan’s movie so much that he is “obsessed” with them, came to R.J. Julia Booksellers in Madison last Thursday night to talk about their ongoing appeal, addressed in his new book “Why To Kill A Mockingbird Matters” (St. Martin’s Press).

Although Santopietro, a New Yorker, is not widely known in Connecticut, the topic attracted more than 60 people to the bookstore on a summer night.

This reminded me of the day three years ago when a morning showing of the movie drew a sell-out audience to the Madison Arts Cinemas across the street from the bookstore. I was fortunate to be there with my wife and our two daughters. I had seen the movie three or four times before, but this was one of the most meaningful movie-going experiences of my life. The crowd erupted in applause as the final credits began to roll; I know not all eyes were dry.

Santopietro supplied us with these statistics illustrating the appeal of the book: 50 million copies have been sold. Every year, 750,000 more are bought. (Lee had hoped it might sell about 5,000 copies, enough to let her write a second book.)

What is it about this story, set in Alabama in 1932, that gets to us?

Santopietro noted in his talk and in his book that “Mockingbird” deals with timeless themes of race relations, childhood innocence and its loss, tolerance and justice. He reminded us in the bookstore that when the book came out, “the civil rights movement was gathering steam. It struck this chord because it was dealing with race. But it was also about economic equality.”

Santopietro cited some of the things happening in July 1960 as the book hit the stores: “JFK was running for president; the civil rights movement was happening; Elvis Presley was the most popular singer. Change was in the air.”

Santopietro said Lee wrote a semi-autobiography based on her childhood in Monroeville, Ala. (She changed the name to Maycomb in the novel.) The central child character, Scout, closely resembled Lee: a tomboy resisting the culture and customs of that town, where blacks could still be lynched.

Finch, the lawyer who agreed to represent Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white woman, was based on Lee’s father: Amasa Coleman Lee, also a lawyer.

“Another reason why the book strikes a chord is Atticus Finch,” Santopietro told us. “This is the man we think we are or can be. It’s who we want to believe we are as Americans. He’s the best of us.”

Santopietro said we can also relate to a central theme of the book: “The concept of ‘the other,’ anybody who is different, who doesn’t look the same. There’s not one of us in this room who has not at some point felt like ‘the other.’”

He said two characters in “Mockingbird” are “the other” — Robinson, because he is black, and Boo Radley, the reclusive, unknown man who rarely comes out of his family’s “haunted” home. Scout, her brother Jem and their friend Dill delight in daring one another to run up to the Radley front door and touch it.

Santopietro said the book’s setting is also a key part of its enduring popularity. He read aloud to us just one passage, describing how the ladies of the town bathed before noon “and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.”

“You hear that and you are on that porch in Alabama,” Santopietro said.

“A part of the appeal of ‘Mockingbird’ is the world it presents,” he added. “It’s a place of civility — ‘Yes, M’am’ — of respect for elders. It seems like a vanished world.”

“In those small communities, your neighbors had your back. Now, communities have fragmented and shattered. Especially in the movie, you feel that sense of community, despite its horrible racism.”

Santopietro added, “This book tells us who we are and it shows us our faults. But it shows us who we still can be. And that’s part of its enormous appeal.”

He treated us to plenty of inside anecdotes about the making of the movie. Although the book had won the Pulitzer Prize and was a best seller, “At first the big Hollywood studios weren’t interested. ‘It’s about some little girl in the South and it’s not even (going to be) a Disney movie?’ But (film producer) Alan Pakula and (director) Robert Mulligan read the book and fell in love with it.”

Santopietro said they convinced Lee they would “protect” the project.

“But then came the question: who should be Atticus?” Santopietro noted. He said the names that were floated included Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper (he died anyway before the movie went into production), Robert Wagner and Bing Crosby. The R.J. Julia audience gasped at the mention of Crosby’s name for that part. “A bad, bad idea!” Santopietro agreed.

He hit us with another bad idea: “Universal was going to distribute the movie and they said: ‘We want our biggest star under contract to play Atticus Finch: Rock Hudson!’ But he didn’t have the gravitas for it and he sort of knew it.”

Meanwhile, Santopietro continued, Lee said: “I can only think of one man to play Atticus Finch and that’s Spencer Tracy.” But when she called him, he told her: “I’m making ‘The Devil at 4 O’Clock’ with Frank Sinatra. I can’t even think about or read ‘To Kill A Mockingbird.’”

Finally, Santopietro said, “a lightbulb went off” and Mulligan and Pakula had the book sent to Gregory Peck.

“He stayed up all night, reading the entire book,” Santopietro said. “He called them the next morning and said: ‘When can I start?’”

As for the screenplay, Lee wasn’t interested in writing it. She wanted Horton Foote. “He was the perfect choice,” Santopietro said. “He was a Southerner. He understood the story in his bones.”

But after the movie too was a smash hit, Santopietro noted: “Harper Lee disappeared.” Why did she never write another book? Santopietro said she told a cousin: “I have nowhere to go but down.” She also had grown weary of the public and press scrutiny, he said.

When someone at the bookstore asked Santopietro what was the reaction of blacks to “Mockingbird,” he noted Oprah Winfrey and President Barack Obama loved it. Santopietro read aloud what Obama said during his farewell speech: “If our democracy is to work in this increasingly diverse nation, each one of us must try to heed the advice of one of the great characters in American fiction, Atticus Finch: ‘You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.’”

Then, the only black person in the room (as far as I noticed), Marilyn Toland, raised her hand and said: “I first read it in eighth-grade as an assignment in Alabama. I have always loved this book. I’m a lawyer. The first lawyer character I can remember reading about was Atticus Finch.”

She told us she grew up in the South during the civil rights movement. She said at first she didn’t even notice Finch lost his case, that Robinson was found guilty (and then died trying to escape jail). “It was the fact he was willing to step up and take the case. As much as African-Americans sacrificed then, it was certainly important what white people did too. There were whites who did see you as a person.”

Santopietro closed his presentation by quoting from the eulogy delivered at Peck’s funeral by Brock Peters, the actor who played Robinson: “In art there is compassion, in compassion there is humanity, with humanity there is generosity and love.”